I have an old Thinkpad T43p that I am trying to extend the life of. So I
recently fitted a cheap 60GB IDE Solid State Drive (SSD) and put a 320GB SATA
Hard Disk Drive (HDD) in the Ultrabay. This is not a true hybrid disk, but
the principles are similar. The root partition will go on the SDD (for performance)
and the home partition will be located on the HDD (for capacity).

I’ve been running Arch Linux on the T43p and the SDD
improves system responsiveness and boot time considerably, especially when using
F2FS or
btrfs (with LZO
compression and SSD mount options) on the root filesystem.

I am also testing Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE)
with the MATE desktop to determine if this is a
suitable operating system for my family to use. It appears they find GNOME
3 confusing and would prefer a familar desktop experience.

While testing LMDE 201203 I ran into a few issues, so I’ve decided to capture
my notes here for future reference.

Fix the installer

In order to install LMDE using partitions on multiple drives you must
use the ADVANCED USER install mode. However, the ADVANCED USER install mode
has a bug that prevents the installer from completing, so that needs to be
fixed first.

sudo nano /usr/lib/live-installer/frontend/gtk_interface.py

Find the following on line 1765.

self.wTree.get_widget("button_next").show()

After it add the following line, making sure the identation is correct.

The Please make sure you wish to manually manage partitions window will
appear. On my system the SSD is detected on /dev/sda and the HDD is detected
on /dev/sdb. Start GParted and partition and format the drives as follows.

I use ext4 for the /boot partition because GRUB can’t currently boot from btrfs
in LMDE. I use ext4 for /home because it offers the best performance on rotational
drives on my Thinkpad T43p. I use btrfs on the /root partition because performs
best (by some margin) on solid state drives in my Thinkpad T43p.

The filesystems need mounting under /target so the installer can install the
OS. Open a Terminal and do the following.